Armed Forces Pay Review Body

Lord Craig of Radley: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is a part of their commitment to the military covenant to implement the recommendations of the Armed Forces Review Body in full.

Lord Astor of Hever: The Government believe that the recommendations of an independent body such as the Armed Forces Pay Review Body (AFPRB) should constitute an integral part of the process used to determine the pay of the Armed Forces. An announcement about the 2012 Pay Review Body's report is expected to be made shortly.

Armed Forces: Anti-submarine Warfare

Lord West of Spithead: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is their intention that the United Kingdom's anti-submarine warfare, particularly passive anti-submarine warfare, techniques and training, should be based on nuclear attack submarines, Merlin helicopters and towed array frigate force.

Lord Astor of Hever: The United Kingdom's anti-submarine warfare protection doctrine is designed to counter the threat faced in both deep water and littoral scenarios through the provision of a layered approach to detecting and defending against potential and actual threats. This is based on the utilisation of a range of assets, including nuclear attack submarines, Merlin helicopters and a towed array frigate force.

Aviation: Passenger Duty

Viscount Hanworth: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Answer by Lord De Mauley on 25 January (Official Report, col. 1045), whether sports parachutists will be subject to aviation passenger duty given that the aircraft they travel in will invariably return to the field from which it took off.

Lord Sassoon: Passengers aboard short pleasure flights which begin or end at the same aerodrome or airport are not liable to pay air passenger duty, as set out in paragraph 3.6 of HM Revenue and Customs' Notice 550, available at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk.

Banking

Lord Myners: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether Ministers or officials from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills have had any recent meetings with the Institutional Investor Committee in connection with pay at banks in which the Government are a shareholder.

Baroness Wilcox: No Ministers or officials from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills have met with the Institutional Investor Committee on this issue. Government's ownership responsibilities of banks are discharged by HM Treasury through UK Financial Investments Ltd.

Banking: Royal Bank of Scotland

Lord Myners: To ask Her Majesty's Government by how much the value of the public shareholding in Royal Bank of Scotland has fallen since 1 January 2011.

Lord Sassoon: The Government do not routinely value either Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) or Lloyds Banking Group (LBG). This information is already publicly available from a wide variety of sources.
	The Government estimate the value of its holdings in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group once a year in HM Treasury's annual report and accounts. The most recent set of these accounts for 2010-11 estimate the value of the Government's shareholding in RBS at £39.26 billion (as at the end of March 2011).
	The Office for Budget Responsibility also publishes the estimate of the expected net overall cost of the financial sector interventions, which include details of the value of the Government's shareholdings in RBS and Lloyds as a total. However, it does not break this down for the individual banks. Its most recent publication of this estimate was on 29 November 2011 as part of its Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

Companies: Executive Remuneration

Lord Myners: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Answer by Baroness Wilcox on 31 January (Official Report, col. 1445), what actions they have taken or will take to give effect to the Minister's declaration that "putting employees on board committees is something that obviously everybody would like to see happen".

Baroness Wilcox: As part of a package of proposals on executive pay, announced in the House of Commons on 23 January, the Secretary of State for Business restated the Government's commitment to diverse company boards and board committees and called for more people from different backgrounds to be appointed as directors.
	From October, all listed companies will be required to report on their policy on boardroom diversity and what progress has been made but the Government will not mandate that employees must be on boards.
	The Government are encouraging employees to ensure their voice is heard by exercising their existing right to information and consultation arrangements and will require companies to say how they have consulted employees on the specific issue of executive pay.

Cosmetic Interventions

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are planning to reclassify injectable intradermal fillers as drugs or medicines rather than devices, in the light of the concerns regarding Poly Implant Prothèse implants, which were classified as class III medical devices.

Earl Howe: United Kingdom legislation governing the regulation of medicines and medical devices is largely drawn from European Union legislation, which sets out definitions that allow products to be placed in the appropriate regulatory framework.
	Dermal fillers placed on the market with a medical purpose are regulated as medical devices due to their mode of action. The effects of dermal fillers are achieved by physical means by filling space under the skin to reduce wrinkles by causing the skin to stretch over the filler. To be classified as a medicine, a product has to achieve its effect through pharmacological, immunological or metabolic means.
	There are currently no plans to seek to change the definitions of the relevant EU legislation to reclassify dermal fillers as medicines. However, on 11 January 2012, the Secretary of State for Health announced that a review would be led by Sir Bruce Keogh to look at the arrangements for ensuring the safety of people seeking cosmetic interventions such as breast implants and dermal fillers. This will include consideration of whether cosmetic products and interventions are appropriately regulated; the full terms of reference for the review have already been placed in the Library.

Economy

Lord Myners: To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made on rebalancing the United Kingdom economy.

Lord Sassoon: The Government are working to build a stronger and more balanced economy in the medium term.
	As set out in the Autumn Statement, rebalancing of expenditure in the UK economy away from government and consumer spending towards net trade and investment has been progressing, although the global backdrop is acting as a significant headwind.
	The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts the economy to rebalance in the coming years. As global conditions normalise, private sector investment is forecast to grow strongly. Net trade, which made a negative contribution to growth on average in the pre-crisis decade, is forecast to make a positive contribution to growth over the forecast period.
	The OBR will publish a fully updated forecast alongside the Budget on 21 March 2012.

Finance: Payday Loans

Lord Kennedy of Southwark: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the incidence of payday lending as a major source of borrowing, as suggested in the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, Precious Plastic 2012.

Baroness Wilcox: The Government acknowledge that there are real concerns about payday lending and some of the practices that appear to blight this market. Payday lending is a key area of regulatory focus for the OFT and it monitors the market for evidence of consumer detriment. They have taken enforcement action against a number of companies in this market but as the market has increased in size it has seen an increase in consumer harm. The OFT will be launching a compliance review of its Irresponsible Lending Guidance that will focus on the payday market and identifying those practices that are the cause of most harm to consumers and the findings will be used to take further enforcement action and drive up standards in this market.
	BIS published Credit, Debt and Financial Difficulty in Britain, 2009/10 in June 2011. The aim of the report is to explore credit use and the extent of consumer indebtedness in Britain over the 12 months from November 2009 to October 2010 and changes since the previous 2010 report, which covered the period from July 2008 to July 2009. The most recent survey, which is available via the BIS website, found that there had been a decrease in the proportion of households using unsecured credit and that the level of financial difficulty may be declining. The survey also showed that 2 per cent of those sampled used high cost credit products. The next survey, covering the period November 2010 to October 2011 will be published in June 2012.

Healthcare: Costs

Lord Laird: To ask Her Majesty's Government which categories of healthcare costs and social security benefits provided to citizens of other European Union states resident in the United Kingdom are refundable to the United Kingdom and according to what conditions; whether refundability is of limited duration; and how such citizens living in the United Kingdom are detected and enumerated for the purposes of claiming costs back from their country of origin.

Earl Howe: If an individual has been working in another European Economic Area (EEA) country, but has remained habitually resident in the United Kingdom and subsequently become unemployed, they may claim jobseekers allowance (contributory) in the UK. They must otherwise meet the contribution conditions for that benefit through contributions paid in other EEA member states and meet the worksearch and availability conditions in the same way as any other jobseeker. In these circumstances, the UK is reimbursed by the country in which the claimant last worked for up to five months. Reimbursements are administered by the International Pension Centre.
	For healthcare costs, member states are required to reimburse each other for the costs of their citizens receiving healthcare in another EEA country as either a state pensioner, resident in the other country; a temporary visitor using the European Health insurance card, a worker posted by a company in one country to another and dependents of these categories. Such individuals are identified by presentation of a Europe wide entitlement document. The requirement to seek reimbursement for an individual is unlimited, provided the entitlement continues to exist.

Healthcare: Costs

Lord Laird: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Earl Howe on 14 November (WA 115-6), what were the amounts paid to and by the Republic of Ireland for healthcare costs under European Union Regulation 883/2004 in each of the past 10 years; what form the registration of new state pensioners takes from 1 January 2012; whether it is mutual; and how the current and future eligibility of pensioners is being determined.

Earl Howe: Payments to and from Ireland since 2007-08 are shown in the following table. Comparable data for years prior to years 2007-08 are not available.
	
		
			  2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11 
			 Payments to Ireland £335,833,000 £86,490,000 £315,868,000 £256,754,000 
			 Payments from Ireland £19,004,000 £19,560,000 £22,723,000 £20,229,000 
		
	
	Claims are made and paid in the currency of the claiming member state. Totals shown for payments to member states are sterling equivalent totals based on exchange rates at the time of payment.
	Claims are made in arrears, sometimes several years in arrears. Payments made in any one year will therefore relate to claims for previous years and do not reflect the value of claims made or received in that year. Payment totals may vary significantly due to variations in the timing of payments made or received for different countries and different claims.
	The future pensioner registration scheme will record the details of every new pensioner from 2012, thus enabling a healthcare competency assessment to be carried out. The scheme will be mutual and payments will be based on the findings from 2014. The competency assessment looks at an individual's pension contributions/entitlement(s) in order to establish which country is liable under European Union regulations. It is intended that once the registration scheme is established, a retrospective exercise will take place in respect of all existing pensioners.

National Research Ethics Service

Lord Turnberg: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential impact on the services provided by medical research ethics committees of the 30 per cent savings proposed for the National Research Ethics Service in this financial year, as cited by its Head of Operations.

Earl Howe: The National Research Ethics Service (NRES) is part of the newly established Health Research Authority (HRA). The HRA was established as a special health authority on 1 December 2011. It has NRES, formerly part of the National Patient Safety Agency, at its core to ensure continuity and stability of the services provided by, and to, research ethics committees.
	As an arm's-length body (ALB) funded by administration funding, the HRA is expected to deliver efficiencies in its admin funding over the current spending review period. These will be achieved through organisational and system improvements, such as proportionate review and will improve the service provided to researchers while protecting research participants. The HRA published the HRA Summary Plan of Activity December 2011-March 2012 and NRES Proposals ahead of Planning for Further Service Improvement and Evaluation on 1 December 2011. These documents describe and assess the impact of the planned improvements. Feedback was invited on the NRES proposals and a summary of the comments received will be published alongside the HRA's 2012-13 business plans in April this year.
	The HRA, and NRES as part of it, are not required to make savings of 30 per cent in this financial year. A misunderstanding over the timing of savings appears to have arisen when the Head of NRES Operations wrote to research ethics committee chairs outlining the need for NRES to deliver efficiencies. As explained in the department's arm's- length body (ALB) Planning Guidance: Key messages and requirements for the planning period 2011-12 to 2014-15, the minimum savings imposed by the 2010 spending review is one-third of administration costs over the period of the spending review (2011-12 to 2014-15). This means the total admin funding provided by the department as income to ALBs (eg through grant-in-aid) will fall by at least this amount over this period. Funding which is classified as programme will not be subject to this reduction.

Railways: Great Western Passenger Franchise

Lord Bradshaw: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Answer by Earl Attlee on 31 January (Official Report, col. 1438), why they have excepted the Intercity Express Programme train from the franchise negotiations.

Earl Attlee: Bidders for the Great Western franchise will be invited to develop the railway. This is over and above the substantial investment that has already been pledged by the Government and Network Rail. This investment includes the electrification of the busiest parts of the route, the Reading station upgrade, Crossrail and a new fleet of trains through the Intercity Express Programme.

Railways: Great Western Passenger Franchise

Lord Bradshaw: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answers by Earl Attlee on 31 January (Official Report, col. 1437-9), whether they took advice from qualified railway engineers in taking the decision to support a bi-mode version of the Intercity Express Passenger train; and, if so, which engineers.

Earl Attlee: As well as the day to day involvement of engineers from Network Rail, the train operators and engineering consultancies in the Intercity Express Programme, the department consulted widely with the rail industry prior to the release of the invitation to tender in 2007, and again prior to the resumption of the programme in 2011. These consultations involved inviting and assessing the views of engineers from the train operators, Network Rail, manufacturers and other interested parties.

Railways: High Speed 2

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the High Speed 2 project is the outcome of any discussions with the European Union concerning the provision of a trans-European railway network.

Earl Attlee: The decision to proceed with HS2 is based on the long-term need for extra capacity on our railways and the desire to foster growth and prosperity. Although the European Commission is aware of the UK's plans for HS2 and are considering how they work with the Trans-European Transport Network, the Commission had no involvement or influence with regard to the decision to proceed with HS2.